What lies ahead in the next decade? According to one British newspaper, our next ten years will be filled with medical advances, the collapse of culture and post-internet politics. We're not even sure what that last one means...

The Independent turned to its experts to predict what the world will look like in 2020, and the results are somewhat worrying for those of us still to experience 2010-2019, especially when it comes to air travel:

Hand luggage is a thing of the past, and every passenger has to undergo an interview before boarding. Nervous flyers are reassured by the presence of an armed guard, now a compulsory member of the cabin crew.

Proponents of "the family unit" also have reason to worry:

By 2019, the traditional nuclear family was increasingly rare, with more people choosing to live alone. Virtual socialising continued apace, causing many people to go for long periods without face-to-face contact with anyone else.

In fact, the internet seems set to continue to dominate almost all -

People were more connected than ever, accessing video, music, mail (the "e" soon became redundant), the web, books, news (with no distinction between papers, websites or television) and magazines whenever they liked, wherever they liked. Time-travellers from 2009 would have found the constant flow of information overwhelming. But somehow, the people of the day learnt to adapt and manage all this. A recent study had shown that 95 per cent of all the information read on mobile electronic devices was merely scanned, with the brain barely processing any of it.

The same study had shown that the brains of young people, while engaging with the remaining 5 per cent, were as active as those of older people reading printed books.

- Well, apart from politics, that is...:

It is January 2020: the leaders of the main parties have set themselves an exhausting schedule of public meetings where, in a throwback to the early 1980s, they will make speeches, in person, in front of live audiences. The forthcoming 2020 general election is being billed the "back to the future" election... Excessive concentration on digital campaigning is thought to have been a factor in the surprise defeat of David Cameron's government in 2015, which brought the Labour Party, under its veteran leader Peter Mandelson, back to power.

The entire fascinating two-part article can be found here and here. [Independent.co.uk]